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Celebration Of Life
In June 24-27, 1971, the Celebration of Life, an ambitious, eight-day rock festival, was held on the banks of the Atchafalaya River at the Cypress Pointe Plantation in McCrea, Louisiana. The festival promoters leased the 500-acre soybean plantation for $20,000 after being evicted from two previous sites. The organizers failed to nail down a location before marketing the event, and it had to be re-located several times at the last minute. The location was publicized as soon as the property was found and people from all over the country started traveling there. The locals tried to block the festival, but once people started to show up, they realized that the safest thing to do—since the roads were congested and people were parked alongside the road for miles and miles—was to let people on the property. So they erected the stage and started the festival. Unfortunately while workers were rushing to get everything ready and erecting the big sound tower, a storm came in and caused the tower to collapse. One of the big scaffolding poles pierced a worker through his torso. The consequence of all the unexpected delays was that instead of the eight days that had been advertised, the festival started four days late and ended up being only four days long. The schedule change caused a lot of bands to cancel their appearances. In a matter of hours, the rock festival had more than doubled the population of Pointe Coupee Parish, for a festival that boasted an impressive lineup of acts. The festival site was poorly equipped to handle this flood of people and the conditions were really bad. It was miserably hot and mosquitos and other bugs were an issue as was the lack of food, water, medical and sanitary facilities. There was one store, visible from the festival site, which sold everything on its shelves. These issues plus public outrage at the actions of some of the attendees resulted in the festival ending earlier than scheduled. By it's conclusion on the third day, over 150,000 people had gathered to enjoy the music and the amusing side shows. Alas, at least four people had drowned in the fast-rushing Atchafalaya River due to a tremendous unannounced current/undertow, one person died from a drug overdose and Undercover cops made more than 100 drug busts. Acts that did perform: Amboy Dukes, Ballin’ Jack, Chuck Berry, Black Oak Arkansas, Bloodrock, Brownsville Station, Chambers Brothers, Ruth Copeland, Delaney and Bonnie, Glass Harp, It’s a Beautiful Day, Country Joe McDonald, Melanie, Potliquor, Boz Scaggs, John Sebastian, Stoneground, Ike & Tina Turner, WAR and Jimmy Witherspoon with Eric Burdon. The Stephen Stills Band was the big closer. Others that were scheduled to play at the concert included: Allman Brothers, The Beach Boys, Butterfield Blues Band, Canned Heat, Miles Davis, Dixieland Jazz Band, Flying Burrito Brothers, John Hartford, Richie Havens, John Lee Hooker, James Gang, B.B. King, Roland Kirk, Taj Mahal, Mandrill, Buddy Miles, Pink Floyd, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Seatrain, Ravi Shankar, Sly and the Family Stone, Cat Stevens, Alex Taylor, Kate Taylor, Voices Of East Harlem, Edgar Winter's White Trash and Johnny Winter.